In industrial flow processing system, there are many different types of pipes, pipe configurations, fluids flowing within the pipes and other conditions that provide a challenge to many industrial process flow meters to operate within a desired specification. In the development of a flow measuring device for an industrial process, it is desirable to test a measuring device in the field under real world conditions to evaluate and develop ones product to meet a customers needs under different conditions. This is also desirable to determine and evaluate the limitation of a particular flow measuring device. While installing a meter on each desired application and various locations is possible. The installation of the meters may be cost prohibitive or time prohibitive. Further, the installation may require the process to be shutdown for a period of time, which may undesirable for particular industrial plants or processes. Once the measuring apparatus is installed, the diagnostic and development system to interrogate and modify the functionality of the meter may be cumbersome and difficult to bring out into the field. These issues limit the ability to test and develop a flow measuring product in the field or at different locations within a flow system.
In many instances, it is desirable to measure or characterize the fluid flow within a pipe or at various pipe locations within an industrial process system. However, the need to measure the flow at particular locations may be for a short period time to understand the flow conditions or troubleshoot a problem in the process flow system. It would be very cost prohibitive to install flow measuring devices at each of the desired locations for a short period of time. Further, if the flow measuring devices has difficulty measuring the desired parameter at the pipe location, the user is unable to modify the parameters, function or code of the device to enable the device to function properly.
It would be advantageous to have portable flow measuring device that can easily be mounted to the outer surface of the pipe and be easily removed to enable the flow measuring device to be easily moved to different pipe locations. Further, it would be advantageous for the processing algorithms to be modified in the field to enable the measuring device to function under different flow conditions.